On November 18, 1978, 918 members of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple cult died in Jonestown, Guyana, in the single largest loss of American civilian lives in a deliberate act before 9/11. From the moment media coverage of the massacre began, much of the reporting has characterized the event as a …
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It’s been a long, complicated journey for Rachel Jeffs Blackmore since escaping the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous Mormon cult led by her father, Warren Jeffs. Blackmore, who recently celebrated her 40th birthday, left her old life behind nearly a decade ago and is now …
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When I was a kid growing up in the Berkeley flatlands, I used to play with a couple of neighbor kids, Tony and his little brother, Mikey. One day in 1979, two men got out of a car, approached Tony and Mikey’s house, and beat another man with a club. …
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When Amy Carlson’s mummified body was found in April 2021, it looked like a blue skeleton. It was also in a sleeping bag wrapped in Christmas lights. Her followers in the Love Has Won cult were apparently still waiting for the Galactics, a group of dead luminaries led by Robin …
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